Scientists have observed one of the brain’s fundamental transformations of information. What they found in the brains of rats, they report, may be true across all mammals.
When people hear footsteps or a woodpecker’s drilling, the rhythmic structure of the sounds is striking, says Michael Wehr, a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon. Even when the temporal structure of a sound is less obvious, as with human speech, the timing still conveys important information.
“As the information progresses towards the auditory cortex, however, the representation of sound undergoes a transformation,” says Wehr. “There is a gradual shift towards neurons that use an entirely different system for encoding information.”
